Galicia is in the far north-west of the Iberian
peninsula. Since 1981 it has possessed the status of an autonomous community
within Spain. Consisting of four provinces (La Coruña, Lugo, Orense
and Pontevedra), it has a surface area of 29,574 km. The capital is Santiago
de Compostela. In 1991, Galicia had a population of 2,720,445. The population
density (92 inhabitants per km) is decidedly higher than the national average.

Another Galician-speaking area, the Franxa Exterior,
is divided between the peripheral regions of Asturias and Castile-León.
The population of the Franxa Exterior is about 70,000. In addition, many
people of Galician origin, around 550,000 of whom are Galician speakers,
live in other parts of Spain, in other European countries and in Latin America.

According to the 1991 census, over 91% of the inhabitants
of Galicia are able to speak Galician. Around half of the population of
the Franxa Exterior probably speak Galician. Some inhabitants of
the Asturian part of the Franxa Exterior speak Asturian, also known
as Bable. Knowledge of Castilian is virtually universal in both Galicia
and the Franxa Exterior.

Emigration from Galicia has been going on for centuries,
and between 1951 and 1975 the region registered net emigration equivalent
to 17_5% of the 1950 population. The first emigrants headed for South America,
then, from 1960 onwards, Galicians also began to emigrate to various European
countries. The exodus was caused by a superfluity of farm labourers and
the region's low level of industrialization. Immigrants, who accounted for
only 6_7% of the population in 1986, are primarily Castilian-speaking civil
servants and skilled workers.

Until the 1980s, Galicia experienced significant
internal migrations, the effect of which was to increase the population
of the more developed coastal provinces of Pontevedra and La Coruña
at the expense of the rural hinterland. In 1991, 27_4% of Galicians lived
in cities with over 100,000 inhabitants, while 36_5% lived in towns with
populations of between 10,000 and 100,000. The region also has a vast number
of small villages and hamlets.

In the Galician economy, agriculture and services
are the dominant sectors. In 1990, 29% of the active population worked in
agriculture or fishing, 15% in manufacturing industry, 9% in the construction
industry and 41% in the service sector. Despite the increasing modernization
of recent decades, farms have reduced in size and many farmers have other
sources of income. Industrial activity has increased somewhat, especially
in the industries related to fisheries, shipping and agriculture. Per
capita income is far below the Spanish average, although the gap has
been narrowing for some years.

According to the 1991 census, 2,421,102 persons
above the age of three could speak Galician (91% of the total), while 1,322,937
people could read it (50%) and 923,441 were able to write it (35% of the
total, and 73% of young people aged 11 to 14). With regard to use of the
language, 1,459,028 (55% of the total) always communicated in Galician,
885,497 (33%) sometimes used it and 142,166 (6%) never used it.

Empirical research currently being analysed reveals
that between 1,350,000 and 1,629,000 people (50 to 60% of the population)
are native speakers of Galician. Among the urban population, the middle
class and young people, this percentage is far lower. The discrepancy between
knowledge and use is particularly striking among young people, scarcely
half of those who have learned Galician at school claiming to use it habitually.
The spoken language is linked to rural areas, older age groups and lower
socioeconomic categories. Knowledge of written Galician, on the other hand,
is more widespread among young people and those in the higher socioeconomic
categories. In the towns the use of Galician has apparently been in constant
decline for several years. Moreover, Galician speakers have a fairly low
opinion of their own competence in Galician; according to a recent survey,
only 11% considered that they spoke the language "well" or "very
well".

Galicia was an independent kingdom in the tenth
and eleventh centuries and became an important place of pilgrimage (Santiago
de Compostela), especially from the eleventh century. Until the mid-14th
century, Galician was the language of the whole of society and of the administrative
and judicial systems. Since it had no native nobility or bourgeoisie, Galicia
fell under permanent Castilian domination in the 13th century. Politically
marginalized within Spain, it was impoverished by the archaic social and
economic structures (the last feudal privileges were not abolished until
1973). Industrial development came late and was of limited scope, and since
the 17th century the demographic weight of Galicia within Spain has been
steadily diminishing.

A new awareness in the 19th century resulted in
the cultural rexurdimiento (rectification) and in galleguismo
(political regionalism). However, the Real Academia da Lingua Galega,
founded in 1904, did not manage to complete its work on the standardization
of the language, but that did nothing to hinder the emergence of a significant
body of literature. The system of political autonomy approved in the 1930s,
which provided, among other things, for the incorporation of the Franxa
Exterior, was never put into effect because of the Civil War. Like the
other non-Castilian languages, Galician was subjected to rigorous repression
under the Franco regime. The process of industrialization begun in the 1950s,
as well as the expansion of the education system and of the Castilian-language
media, facilitated the generalized penetration of Castilian, which had hitherto
been slow to filter into the largely rural society of Galicia.

The autonomous government (Xunta Galega)
which was constituted in 1981, adopted a number of measures designed to
promote the knowledge and use of Galician, although the effectiveness of
the measures is often questioned.

Galician comes from the same branch of the family
of Romance languages as Portuguese. During the golden age of troubadour
poetry in the 13th and 14th centuries, differences between the two languages
were scarcely perceptible. Thereafter, Galician was to become the means
of communication of a rural society while Portuguese was standardized on
the basis of the Lisbon dialect and became the language of the royal court,
and the divergences between the two were to grow ever more marked.

Modern Galician does not have dialects in the true
sense but rather linguistic blocs: the eastern bloc, which includes the
Franxa Exterior, and the central and western blocs. The spoken language,
peppered with numerous castilianisms, shows the effects of belated and often
contested standardization. The Standardization Act of 1983 finally came
down in favour of the standards formulated jointly by the Real Academia
Galega (RAG) and the Instituto da Lengua Galega (ILG), but the polemics
between the "Lusistas" and the Galleguistas go on.
In the Franxa Exterior some groups deny that the language spoken
there is actually Galician.

The main recent events have been the publication
of linguistic standards in 1982, the adoption of the Linguistic Standardization
Act and the creation of Radio Televisión Galega (both 1983),
the introduction of Galician into the education system in 1983-84 and the
creation of the Directorate-General for Linguistic Policy in 1990. Numerous
private organizations are also dedicated to the defence of Galician in various
domains, such as the Asociación de Funcionarios para la Normalización
Lingüística de Galicia (AFNLG), the Mesa para a Normalización
Lingüística de Galicia (MNLG), the Asociación
Sócio- Pedagóxica Galega (AS-PG), the Nova Escola Galega
(NEG), the Asociación de Profesores de Lingua e Literatura
(APLL), Editorial Galaxia, which has devoted itself exclusively to
the publication of works in Galician since the fifties), the Asociación
de Escritores en Lingua Galega (AELG), the Patronato Rosalia Castro,
the Unión dos Traballadores do Ensino de Galicia (UTEG), the
Confederación Xeral de Traballadores Galegos - Intersindical Nacional
and the Associaçom Galega da Lingua, which is dedicated to
the dissemination of Portuguese culture and the application of the Portuguese
linguistic standards.

The promotion of Galician in the Franxa Exterior
has been the subject of several gatherings, including two congresses
(in 1989 and 1990) which called for support from the Galician Government
as provided for in the Galician Linguistic Standardization Act (access to
the Galician education system, means of receiving the radio and television
programmes of the Galician broadcasting authority, etc.) and demanding that
Madrid and the Governments of Asturias and Castile-León respect Galician
language and culture and that Galician be introduced into the schools of
the Franxa.

Conflicts have arisen in Galicia in recent years
over the use (and non-use) of Galician in different situations - in schools,
for place names, in regional and local administration, in the judicial system,
etc. The Constitutional Court, consulted by the national Government, has
rejected certain legislative provisions designed to promote Galician. An
Asociación Gallega para la Libertad de Idioma (AGLI) is opposed
to the standardization of Galician, which it sees as a threat to the status
of Castilian. This discord is also fuelled by the clash between those who
defend the linguistic standards adopted by the regional Government and the
"Lusistas", who believe that these standards are undermining
the unity of the Galician and Portuguese languages.

The Galician Autonomy Statute of 1981 declares
Galician to be "Galicia's own language" and confers on it the
status of an official language alongside Castilian, the official language
of the Spanish State. The Statute grants all citizens the right to know
and use Galician. The Galician Government must guarantee its use in all
areas of activity and promote knowledge of it. The Statute also defines
the powers of the Autonomous Community in the realm of education.

The Galician Linguistic Standardization Act of
1983 declares Galician to be the official language of the regional administration
and its associated bodies. It grants citizens the right of recourse to the
law to safeguard their linguistic rights. Other provisions refer to the
status of Galician in education, to the promotion of Galician culture, to
the media, to the use of Galician in dealings between the regional administration
and the public, to its use in the judicial system and within local authorities
and with regard to place names. The Real Academia Galega is named
as the body responsible for setting linguistic standards. The Act provides
for participation by the Galician Government in the process of linguistic
standardization in the Franxa Exterior and requires it to offer cultural
and linguistic services to Galician emigrants.

These two basic instruments have been applied by
the Galician Government through a series of decrees and other secondary
provisions. A law enacted in 1988 governs the use of Galician in municipal
administrations.

Galician has no official status within the central
administration. The Autonomy Statutes of Asturias and Castile-León,
the communities in whose territory the Franxa Exterior lies, make
no reference at all to the Galician language.

Under the Autonomy Statute, the promotion and
teaching of Galician falls within the exclusive competence of the Xunta,
which also has "full powers" to regulate and administer
the education system. The Linguistic Standardization Act establishes the
official status of Galician at all levels of education, recognizes the right
of children to receive their initial education in their own mother tongue
and requires the regional Government to promote the use of Galician in that
domain. Galician became a compulsory part of all non-university education,
and by the time they finish school pupils must have achieved equal competence
in Galician and Castilian. University teaching staff and students are entitled
to use the official language of their choice. The teaching of Galician became
a compulsory element of adult education and teacher training. Measures are
laid down to promote knowledge of Galician among the teaching profession.
Various secondary provisions regulate the number of hours for which Galician
is to be taught, the use of Galician as the language of instruction in certain
subjects (Galician language, literature and history, social science, etc.),
the place of Galician in educational administration and in the initial and
in-service training of teachers, etc.

In preschool education, although the use of Galician
as the language of communication is compulsory for native speakers, only
about 20% of children in nursery schools actually receive most of their
instruction in Galician while 44% are taught partly in Galician.

In primary school and during the first stage of
secondary education (from the age of 6 to 14), between 64% and 89% of pupils
are taught at least partly in Galician, according to official statistics
from 1992. Galician is a compulsory subject in almost all schools. At the
final stage of secondary education and in vocational training, a minority
of pupils are taught mostly in Galician, while a larger minority are sometimes
taught in Galician. Almost all of them learn Galician for three to four
hours a week.

In higher education Galician is an official language,
alongside Castilian, in the region's three universities, and candidates
for the entrance examination are tested in Galician if they have been learning
the language during the last four years at secondary school. Two universities
offer degree courses in Galician, and these courses are conducted entirely
in Galician. The introduction of Galician into university administration
has made more progress than its use as a teaching medium, which varies very
widely between departments and faculties. Around 10% of subjects are taught
in Galician and 18_5% of students are taught at least partly in Galician,
according to data for 1990-91. The lack of familiarity with written Galician
among teaching staff and students is a major obstacle, but attitudes to
Galician are generally favourable.

With regard to adult education, although the Linguistic
Standardization Act lays down that classes in Galician are compulsory at
this level, very little attention seems to be paid to this type of education.

As far as teacher training is concerned, Galician
courses are compulsory for all students of colleges of education, who are
also able to take a special diploma in Galician. Thanks to in-service training
programmes organized by the regional Government and the universities, 23%
of active teachers have attended initiation courses in Galician and 64%
possess a more advanced diploma, according to statistics dating from 1989.
Mastery of Galician is considerably greater among young teachers than among
older ones.

In the schools of the Franxa Exterior, Galician
is neither taught nor used as the classroom language. Teachers are not very
familiar with written Galician.

The Galician Autonomy Statute, the Linguistic
Standardization Act and the other legal provisions enacted by the central
and regional governments contain measures designed to promote the use of
Galician within the judicial system: the appointment of officials with knowledge
of Galician, the validity of documents and procedures, whether they are
in Castilian or Galician, the right of citizens to use Galician in their
dealings with the judicial authorities and to address the court in Galician,
on condition that neither party objects (translation only being required
if the implications of the case transcend the borders of Galicia), courses
in Galician for judges, magistrates, public prosecutors and other officials,
etc.

The creation of the Supreme Court of Galicia was
also regarded as an important measure of decentralization.

For all that, it seems that the formal use of Galician
in the judicial system remains fairly rare and that very few cases are heard
in that language (except perhaps by the Supreme Court of Galicia). On the
other hand, the oral use of Galician is apparently quite widespread, even
among civil servants and other professional people, the linguistic proximity
of Galician and Castilian making it easy to slip spontaneously into Galician
without the need for any formal procedure.

The Madrid authorities regard Galician as a cultural
treasure, but the regional delegations to the national Government, like
their subordinate bodies, seem to make very limited use of Galician in their
dealings with the public, the existence of bilingual forms sometimes being
the only acknowledgement of the existence of another language besides Castilian.
Despite the legislative provisions on the matter, few measures are apparently
taken to ensure that civil servants posted to Galicia are familiar with
the Galician language.

As far as the regional Government is concerned,
debates in the Galician Parliament are mainly conducted in Galician, and
members of the Government use Galician at numerous public events. Knowledge
of Galician is claimed to be a criterion for employment in the regional
administration, and measures have apparently been taken to ensure that civil
servants receive language training.

As for the local authorities, most of the municipalities
seem to make quite frequent use of Galician, both in Council meetings and
in contacts with the public. It should be emphasized, however, that this
varies according to the party in power.

The use of Castilian for written notices, on its
own or along with Galician, seems to predominate in most of the public services,
except in the case of hospital signs, which are mainly in Galician; police
stations, on the other hand, are signposted exclusively in Castilian.

The Linguistic Standardization Act grants the Xunta
the right to lay down place names, with the exception of street names, which
are a matter for the municipalities, and lays down that the only official
name of a place is its Galician name. Galician surnames and forenames are
also authorized under Spanish law.

Most road signs and public notices are currently
either in Galician or in both languages. The same does not apply to shop
signs, which are almost all in Castilian. Popular demand was an important
factor in the restoration of traditional Galician place names.

The Linguistic Standardization Act entrusts the
Real Academia Galega with the task of setting linguistic standards
for the Galician language, updating linguistic rules and advising on correct
usage. Numerous linguistic and terminological research studies are also
undertaken at the Institut da Lingua Galega and in the Galician departments
of the universities.

The daily press in Galicia is basically in Castilian,
the Galician columns in the main dailies amounting, with few exceptions,
to around 5% of the total copy. Moreover, the use of Galician is restricted
to certain types of article - reviews of regional culture, articles expressing
opinions, radio and television programmes, death notices, etc. Under an
agreement signed in 1991, the Galician Government offers grants to newspapers
and Galician press agencies with a view to raising the profile of Galician,
but the results have not been spectacular. Since January 1994 a new daily
paper entirely in Galician, O Correo Galego, with a circulation of
5,000 to 10,000 copies, has been appearing in newsagents' kiosks, and the
creation of one or two more newspapers in Galician has been announced.

There are several weekly, monthly and quarterly
magazines and journals published entirely in Galician and devoted to various
topics, including culture, economics, religious life and the environment.
Only one of these, the weekly news magazine A Nosa Terra, founded
in 1977, has a circulation of more than 1,000 copies. Other magazines appearing
at various intervals are partly written in Galician.

As for radio, only one station, Radio Galega,
which is operated by the Galician broadcasting authority, broadcasts 24
hours a day in Galician to around 152,000 listeners. Two stations operated
by the central broadcasting authority (Radio Nacional de España),
as well as three commercial stations, broadcast programmes in Galician for
a few hours per week. Around ten local radio stations broadcast entirely
in Galician; others have some Galician programmes in their schedules.

Televisión Galega
(TVG) transmits programmes almost entirely in Galician for about 100 hours
per week and is said to have captured around 24% of the market. The programmes
transmitted by one of the two channels of Televisión Española
include several hours per week in Galician. The other Spanish channel only
transmits in Galician in exceptional circumstances. The Galician language
is totally absent from two of the three commercial channels, while the other
only transmits occasional special reports in Galician. Some local television
stations also offer programmes in Galician.

In the world of computers there is very little
software in Galician (accounting and library- management programs), but
the word-processing package WordPerfect does offer a spellcheck option in
Galician (financed by the regional Government).

Books published in Galician, the number of which
increased from 354 in 1987 to 760 in 1992, comprise mainly school textbooks,
children's books, poetry, stories and novels. The number of translations
of foreign works is on the increase. The publishing sector is heavily dependent
on the school system, since adult readers are not very familiar with Galician
in its written form. The Xunta subsidizes the publication of books
and of educational aids and materials in Galician.

Galician music is demonstrating a fair degree of
vitality. Dozens of singers and groups sing in Galician, mainly performing
traditional music but also pop and rock numbers. Numerous recordings have
been made.

Several professional and amateur drama companies
stage most of their theatre productions in Galician. The professionals can
obtain subsidies from the Xunta, and most of them have links with
the Centro Dramático Galego, an official body established
in 1984. Since 1984, the cooperative Escola Dramática Galega
has played an important coordinating and animating role.

Eight full-length feature films in Galician have
been made in the region since 1987. All of them have been financed by the
regional Government, but their distribution on the commercial circuits has
been very limited. The Xunta also offers grants for other audiovisual
productions (videos, short films, etc.). The only films that are dubbed
or subtitled in Galician are those transmitted by TVG.

Other cultural events include cultural tours, theatre
festivals for adults and for children, an international romeria,
a poetry festival and festivals of Celtic culture.

In addition, the regional Government has taken
numerous measures to promote Galician culture: library, publishing and translation
grants, aid for audiovisual, theatre and record production, literary prizes,
grants to other bodies, including the Real Academia da Lingua Galega,
etc.

While knowledge of Galician is theoretically a
prerequisite for the appointment of regional civil servants and university
staff, in other sectors this criterion is not considered, except perhaps
for posts which require frequent contact with the public.

Institutional advertising is mostly done in Galician.
The commercials broadcast by the Galacian Government-run media is exclusively
in Galician on radio and partly in Galician on television. The advertising
broadcast by national State-owned channels and private channels is entirely
in Castilian, like all other commercial advertising, with the possible exception
of advertisements for local products or merchants and bank advert

In rural areas the language is passed on in the
traditional manner. However, because of the depopulation of the countryside
which has been taking place since the 1950s, the use of Castilian, which
had been a characteristic feature of the urban population since last century,
has now spread to an increasing percentage of the population. In the towns,
Galician is only maintained by a minority of culturally motivated families.
Research shows that only 4_5% of today's young town-dwellers claim Galician
as their mother tongue, although virtually all of them understand it and
over 90% can speak it. The exclusive use of Galician, according to a survey
conducted in 1991, had fallen from 84_5% to 34_8% over three generations,
giving way in most cases to bilingualism. On the other hand, in some urban
families, the children who are learning Galician at school are "giving
back" the language to their parents by a sort of inverted oral tradition;
this phenomenon, however, is not sufficiently widespread to reverse the
general trend. Young couples who are both native speakers will continue
to communicate in Galician, and it is estimated that marriages between Galicians
account for 70 to 80% of all marriages in Galicia.

In terms of age groups, the 1991 census reveals
considerable increases in comprehension and oral competence among all groups
with the exception of young children, which reinforces the theory that family
life is becoming increasingly castilianized. On the other hand, the gulf
between different age groups is widening when it comes to using the language,
systematic use of Galician being only half as common among under-18s as
among over-65s. The impact of schools, however, is evident, because for
the first time, the continuous fall in the use of Galician has begun to
reverse for the first time among the present generation of adolescents.
The same group also registers the best results for knowledge of written
Galician, which is likewise attributable to the education system.

The social implications of using Galician are tinged
with a certain ambiguity. For some people it has negative connotations -
although this attitude is probably dying out - because the use of Galician
is most common, even today, among rural populations, the less-educated and
people in less prestigious jobs. By contrast, over the last few years the
status of Galician has risen as a result of its introduction into the media,
education and administration and because of the emergence of a Galician-speaking
intellectual élite; all of these factors have endowed Galician with
a positive image.

Galician speakers seem to be fairly optimistic
about the future of their language. While they almost unanimously believe
that bilingualism will continue to prevail in Galicia, over half of them
take the view that the use of Galician will increase. Almost 90% consider
Galician o be as useful as Castilian. Attitudes among speakers as well as
non-speakers are generally favourable to the use of Galician in numerous
areas of social and public life, the best-informed people being the most
favourably disposed.

No information was collected regarding possible
supranational exchanges or on any measures taken by the Spanish Government
to promote the Galician language abroad. However, the Galician Government,
in accordance with the Linguistic Standardization Act, organizes courses
in Galician language and culture in places in Spain and abroad where there
are sizeable Galician communities, as well as competitive examinations for
the appointment of lecturers in Galician language and literature to foreign
universities.

The Galician language cannot easily shake
off the effects of its long rural past. As the almost exclusively oral language
of a poor and ageing society, it has not taken root among the young people
and in urban society, which has increased in relative importance in the
wake of the rural exodus of recent decades. The Spanish authorities have
confined themselves to tolerating its existence, and the effectiveness of
the Galician Government seems more equivocal than the numerous measures
taken to promote the language would suggest. In certain domains, such as
the judicial system, the fact that the oral use of Galician is quite widely
accepted appears to stem more from its linguistic proximity to Castilian
than from a genuine equality of status, and its undeniably high profile
in schools and in some of the communication media seems insufficient as
yet to alter the general trend towards diglossia and passivity. In the Franxa
Exterior the total absence of protective measures by central government
and by the two regional governments concerned has helped to create an even
more precarious situation.